Judgement on Nuremberg : an historical enquiry into the validity of article six of the London charter as an expression of contemporary international law.

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Date

Permanent Link

Degree Grantor

University of Canterbury

Degree Level

Masters

Degree Name

Master of Arts (Hons)

In 1945 the Allies declared that the process
controlling the punishment of the major Nazi war criminals
was legal rather than political and thus not reliant on an
"arbitrary exercise of power". They claimed that the
crimes with which Germany's Nazi leadership were to be
indicted were provided for in existing international law.
This assertion was made despite the fact that it
contradicted the pre-war, war-time and early post-war war
crimes policy and activities of the Allied nations. This
thesis, in examining the process by which the Allies
reached agreement on the punishment of Germany's Nazi
leadership, concludes that the Allies evidenced scant
regard for the system known as international law. Rather,
the process appears more as an effort to justify Allied
war-time policies and gain post-war public support.
In 1945 no law existed to give the victorious Allies
the legal right to punish, to the full extent, what they
saw as Nazis' misdeeds. The Allies thus chose to leave the
realm of international law and enter into the political
domain. In effect they created the necessary law.
However, in order not to create law by which they
themselves might in the future be judged, the Allies chose
to do so not through accepted channels for the creation of
either national or extra-national legislation.
Despite Allied claims to the contrary, the disposal
of the major Nazi war criminals was indeed an "arbitrary
exercise of power". As such, it had historical precedents
which include the imprisonment of Napoleon in 1815 and the
planned political trial of the Kaiser in 1919.